Tell us a little about your freethinking group!

This thread is the idea of Perry, from the St. Louis Atheists meetup group. They are trying to get started, and he asked me to tell them a bit about us. So I'm starting a similar thread so people from other meetup groups can tell us about themselves.

Good idea, Perry, and thanks for the suggestion!

Hi everyone!

I'm Perry from the Saint Louis Atheists Meetup Group. I've been a member of our group for about 3 years and I've recently assumed organizer duties here.

Our group is very similar to yours in size and I'm trying to find ways to grow it.

I've combined the St Louis Atheists and Brights Meetups and we meet about twice per month. I'm also trying to add "Movie Nights" into our schedule.

Last month, about 15 of us went to see "Jesus Camp" and it was a great! We can't wait for "Deliver Us From Evil" to be released in the Midwest...

Anyway, the purpose of this message is that I'm contacting Freethinking Meetup groups throughout the Midwest (there are a TON of small groups) and encouraging them to communicate more.

Instead of having lots of little groups, I want to try to bring people together into larger, more efficient groups. I'd love to have an Atheist CROWD instead of a group!

If you haven't heard, the first Brights Conference is going to be held here in Missouri next year. This is very surprising to everyone because Missouri isn't known for tolerance...

Civil Brights


There are MILLIONS of Atheists in the USA but most people aren't aware of it because WE DON'T COMMUNICATE!

Well... Thanks for listening to me and I hope to meet some of you some day!

-Perry-

http://atheists.meetu...

My suggestion is to align ourselves with Center for Inquiry - in my opinion the freethought organization.

I will talk more about at the upcoming meeting and bring literature.

I'm very interested in the idea. I'm not sure what the definition of "aligning" with them is, as I don't see us as being out of alignment with them now. Affiliation interests me, I will be looking into what is involved in affiliating with them this month.

My suggestion is to align ourselves with Center for Inquiry - in my opinion the freethought organization.

I will talk more about at the upcoming meeting and bring literature.

I've not had a chance to delve too deeply into their website, but I did check out the most recent podcast with the discussion with a premier scientist who is still religious and believes in a personal god. One thing worth noting is his reference to the C.S. Lewis book "Meer Christianity". To paraphrase he said that he would challenge any atheist to read the book and refute the arguments therein, and that he didn't think anyone would be able to do it.

Sorry fella, but this was already done ages ago by Dan Barker in his book "Losing Faith in Faith". He has a chapter dedicated to this, as he read it back when he was an evangelical preacher (and felt much the same way about the soundness of the arguments) and wanted to read it again with the fresh eyes of reason. Needless to say it didn't stand up, and his article was called "Meer Assertions". It's been a while since I've read that so I don't remember how exactly he dissected it. It may be a good challenge sometime to read these back to back.

Anyway, I don't know much about the Center for Inquiry, although I did have a subscription to Skeptical Inquirer for a short while. My main source for the goings on in the secular world is the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They are currently over 11,000 member strong and more dedicated to separation issues.

Thanks for pointing them (Center for Inquiry) out, and I'll be sure to dig a little more deeply as time allows.